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A symbol with properties will go a long way if you know its going to be repetitive in the design with the possibility of having objects change color, text, shapes, visibility etc..This tutorial will get ya up to speed with creating a Rich Symbol without knowing JavaScript and using the custom Create Symbol Script command that generates the JS to make a symbol with editable properties.
Please let me know if I goofed up somewhere on the steps. You all are my proof readers and hope you can help me improve this tutorial if you find something weird about it.
Sample Files:
Fireworks PNG:
ORGANIZE OBJECTS TO CREATE A SYMBOL WITH PROPERTIES
1. Create your icon artwork or open the sample file, sitemap_sample.png. (my artwork is in the icon design page, feel free to use that for this tut)
2. Give the textfields unique names with no white space in-between words.
(This step is very important as the names will be referenced in JavaScript that controls the symbol properties)
For instance, when I created a textfield for the text object in the middle of the icon describing the document type, the default name was {} cause thats the characters I typed into the text object. I gave the text object a real name like docType. You can think of this workflow similar to giving a movieClip in Flash an instance name.
3. Select all the objects in the icon and convert to a graphic symbol and save to common library. When prompted where to save, go up one level and create a new folder called mysitemap (within the common lib) and save the symbol inside it.
You'll notice the symbol was removed from your document. No fear, its simply been moved to the Common Library which we will be accessing in a moment.
CREATING THE SCRIPT
4. Go to Commands > Create Symbol Script
5. In the Create Symbol Script dialog, click the "..." button in the top right corner and locate the symbol in the common library > mysitemap folder and click ok.
Where is the new Common library located you ask? Its in your local user configuration folder. On Windows:
[Hard Drive] > Documents and Settings > (user account) > Application Data > Adobe > Fireworks CS3 > Common Library
6. Next, click the [+] button 3 times to add 3 new properties.
7. In the element name column, click the first element combo box and select "docType"
8. For the Attribute, select "textChars"
9. Change the Property name to "Doc Type Label"
10. Now for the Value field we need to add a default value so something shows up when you drag and drop the symbol onto the canvas. In this case, lets put "{}" since its a generic identifer for code.
11. Now select the second Element and choose "docTitle"
12. For the attribute, choose "textChars"
13. Change the Property name to "Doc Title Label"
14. Add the value "doc-title"
15. For the last property, select the 3rd element combo box and choose "docBg"
16. For the Attribute, choose "fillColor"
17. Change the property name to "Color"
18. Add the value of medium grey "#999999"
19. Click Ok and the script will be generated instantly
USING THE NEW PAGE RICH SYMBOL
20. Switch to the sitemap_sample.png
21. Its time to access our new rich symbol and add it to our current document. Go to Window > Common Library and expand the "mysitemap" folder
22. Drag the Page Icon symbol and place it on the canvas. Reference the site map layout already created.
The value to using Rich Symbols is updating the Symbol properties from the Symbol Properties panel. (Window > Symbol Properties)
MultiQuote
